Life Infinitum

For many years, a young man named Brian was a vivacious expression of life at Seaside. Truly, when I say vivacious, I mean extraordinary, as this one-of-a-kind young man was a survivor. On May 21, 2002, Brian was involved in and survived a crash with an 18 wheeler. Three weeks after the accident, Brian woke up blind from a coma his spine broken and pelvis shattered in a multitude of places. What followed was a nearly four year rehabilitation that most would find so intense they would not have had the stamina. But not Brian. He embraced the opportunity to redefine his expression and like everything else he had ever taken on, with full zest and the highest of intentions to succeed.

I first met Brian in 2006 when he started coming to Seaside for our services on Sundays. He was an expression of joy and music. He always attended with his beaming mom who, for years, I thought was his girlfriend. Brian wasn’t a guy in who wanted any sympathy for the obvious physical challenges he encountered. No way. He was a carpenter, golfer, snow boarder and played in rock bands. He had a fuller life than one could even imagine. I remember as if it was yesterday, Seaside held a golf tournament and Brian was the first to sign up! Not only that, but he carried his foursome with his excellent play and no visual sight. Nothing could douse his spirit. Limitation was just not a word in his vocabulary. His love for music never waned and he used his hands to create art I greatly admired. I once told him how much I liked the stone necklace he was wearing and he shared with me humbly that he’d made it. What grace. The next week he brought a new one he’d created just for me. It meant so much to me that I placed it with great care on my altar at home where it has been ever since, until just last month. You see, Brian was also a wonderful cook, so on a recent summer morning he sent his mom out to get the perfect ingredients for a special concoction he planned to create and when she returned, she found him sitting in his favorite chair having just released his life force. His spirit chose that beautiful moment to peacefully move on from this world.

I was given the privilege to lead the celebration of life service for Brian. I took the necklace he made for me off my altar and gently placed it around my neck. Wanting to feature it front and center, I picked a special shirt with an open collar so everyone could see his fine craftsmanship and further appreciate what an extraordinary expression of God he was. His mom recognized it immediately and was moved deeply when I walked in wearing it. The remembrance service started with some great music from the 70’s. When it was complete I stepped up to the lectern and pronounced that I could just see and feel Brian’s presence Brian standing in the back of the sanctuary grooving and waving his hands in the air. As if on que yet much to the astonishment of me and everyone in the place, the necklace Brian had handcrafted for me with ingredients of equal parts love, compassion, kindness and appreciation for the natural beauty in the world burst apart from my neck. I could just see him holding himself as he laughed from the deepest part of his soul at the sight of those beads and stones rolling all over the floor, down my shirt and pants getting stuck in my shoes and underwear. I spent much of the service picking up stones.

What an extraordinary experience. Life and Death. Yin and Yang. Can’t have one without the other and neither one separates us from the One or each other as we live move and have our being in the One. A loved one may be gone from our sight but that is all they are gone from. They are just as alive and aware as when they left our side. Brian is just as able to bare his living spirit’s expression wherever he has chosen to land. One thing for sure, love transcends time and space as we know it. The love that brought you together with a loved one here will surely keep you united through the multidimensional realms of self-expression. Brian’s direction of his celebration of Life service from the other side was as clear as the guitarist, who shortly thereafter broke out in a rockin’ rendition of Led Zeppelin’s, Stairway to Heaven. I bet Brian jumped those steps two and three at a time, especially after his beautiful show of presence at his celebration of life service!